Printer for printing on CDs

[Little Lou]

Can anyone recommend a high quality printer to get a professional finish when printing on CD's. We think it'll looks more professional than printing CD labels.

Thanks

[leehack]

I'd like an answer to this also. That lightscribe stuff interests me too but i don't understand enough of it. Where's Mr Google himself when you need him, typical , Stereo Steve, where for art thou.

[Froogle]

The two best options for printing on disks is an Epson or Canon printer. The most popular choice is the R265 or R285 printer from Epson. You can pick these up for around £55-£70.

They print on paper too and if you want to print a cd or dvd you put a tray in the front with the disk on top and the printer will print direct to the surface.

The finish is really good, especially with full face printable disks. Unlike thermal printable disks, they are not water proof. If you spill water on them then the dye will run. You can spray the surface with lacquer to make it "water proof" Hairspray works too.

Lightscribe is something totally different. You buy special lightscribe (or labelflash) disks which once burned to, you flip them over, stick it back in the drive and use the laser to burn an image or text on the top.

The most common colour for a lightscribe disk is gold, but you do get other colours. The laser obviously doesn't "print" in colour.

It can take about an hour to burn a lightscribe image to the disk.

more information on lightscribe discs available here

an example of good quality printable dvds here

[Little Lou]

Thanks Froogle - Lightscribe is rather 'whoosh - over my head' but I'm with you on the Epson & Canon - thanks for the info, much appreciated !

[Cheapprices4u]

to add to this

reguarding discs there are so many to choose from if you are giving it to customers pay a little extra
you dont want them thinking your company is penny pinching and rubbish now do you

cheapest is always best

there are what i call
car boot discs ( for the scallys on the car boot and the latest films)
family discs ( good for short/medium term backups)
archive discs ( good for long term archives id trust my data and photos of the family on)

i could go into brand names but its all personaly choice

printer choices above are good as you can get refillable or compatiable carts for them to save on ink costs

[TraceyHand]

thanks for that info, Nicholas.
I have to admit I had NO idea what lightscribe meant!!
and now I feel educated

[leehack]

Cheers for that Nicholas, some great info, i now understand lightscribe which has always perplexed me i must say.

As for disks Gareth i was told that Verbatim are a great disc and to never look any further, but i guess it's down to choice, budget and opinion. The data i store on discs is priceless to me, so i couldn't give a monkeys what the discs cost, within reason of course.

Find out what the best available is and work backwards, never find the cheapest and work upwards is what I have always tried to do. Websites are similar nowadays, join the rat race to become a busy fool, or lift yourself out of that race and ooze service and quality instead.

[Jim Riley]

If you are expecting to do reasonable volumes, then you should look to get an industrial strength cd burner and printer (combined).

We spent about 10k on a combo system from Verity Systems and its churned out over 200k discs since without problems at around 20p each (including printing/consumable costs). Huge saving on time too, since the whole process is robotic.

We used to print and apply paper labels; very time-consuming and the finish is unprofessional too imo

Jim

[Jan]

We use the Epsom but have to replace the printer every few thousand CDs, it works out cheaper than buying a better printer if you take the cost of the printer and consumables into account. It's a little labour intensive though.

Costs around 10p a CD, only practical if you are making less than 6000 cds a year.

Regards,

[Froogle]

We use the Epsom but have to replace the printer every few thousand CDs, it works out cheaper than buying a better printer if you take the cost of the printer and consumables into account. It's a little labour intensive though.

Costs around 10p a CD, only practical if you are making less than 6000 cds a year.

Regards,

You could also consider a Continuous Ink Supply System to go with the printer if you intend to print a lot. There are ink tanks that sit at the side of the printer and feed ink into the cartridges. They are at least 6 times cheaper to run than buying cartridges. A set of 6x 100ml bottles cost around £7 which is about the price of 1 set of carts each 13ml.

Can I ask why you need to throw the printer out after doing a few thousand prints? What happens? Does it stop working and give you the error "internal parts are past their serviceable life"?

[Stereo Steve]

R265 is a good starting point to get into the swing. It's not an 'industrial' solution though and I wouldn't fancy doing hundreds of discs this way. The finish will be good though.

As for media - Verbatim and TDK make good printable discs. You can buy junk for a third of the price but you will run into trouble sooner or later. If you really want the best you need some Taiyo Yuden printables, the most compatible media in the market.

[Little Lou]

Thanks for everyone's input on this, very interesting reading

We're just starting out so I think will be going for an Epson, possibly with the continuous ink doodar and can take it from there.